MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED: The University of Chicago

Chicago

Enrollment: 14,013

Endowment: $6.6 billion

The University of Chicago was the first out of the gate when President Barack Obama’s future foundation was announced last month, with a complete website advertising the benefits of the Obama library for both the city and the university. The university has been working on its pitch for at least two years. It’s considered the heavyweight in the field: As Obama recently told college presidents, the university is both his Hyde Park neighbor and his former employer. “I loved the law school classroom,” Obama wrote in “The Audacity of Hope”, “the stripped-down nature of it, the high-wire act of standing in front of a room at the beginning of each class with just blackboard and chalk, the students taking measure of me.” He has returned to speak at the college once as president for a campaign rally just before the 2010 midterm elections.

The first lady has said she felt shunned by the prestigious university when she was a high school student nearby on the South Side. But as an administrator, first in student affairs and later at the medical school, she worked on several projects to strengthen ties between the university and the surrounding area. “It didn’t matter how much money I was making; it didn’t matter how prestigious my job seemed to others — I knew I was making an impact in the community that raised me,” she said. “I knew I was helping to change people’s lives in ways that I couldn’t sitting behind a big fancy desk.”

The Obamas’ inner circle has close ties with the University of Chicago. Many Obama family friends are in the university’s employ. Susan Sher, the university executive leading the library campaign, is the first lady’s former chief of staff.

While there’s no room on its Hyde Park campus to build a landmark building, the university is considering sites throughout the South Side, perhaps in poorer neighborhoods that border Hyde Park that are accessible by public transportation. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s goal is to have just one Chicago bid — though it’s unclear that the university will play along with that plan. The foundation’s selection team, not Emanuel, is in charge, said a person involved with the University of Chicago planning process. The university would be open to some possible collaborations with other Chicago institutions, this person said, but what those might entail — and what the deal breakers might be — are still unclear.